Butcher's Grip

The Belly Chop

2011-03-01T17:55:00.000-08:00

As promised, here is Mr. Smrecek's post about our friend, the "Belly Chop."

We both had fun with this, but it just goes to show what a good relationship with your butcher can get you...and what good relationships with my customers can get me. Since we've opened, I have had requests for things as simple as the "never been able to find before" pork neck bones for Grandma's tomato gravy recipe to requests for Albanian sausages I wont dare try to spell or pronounce. I am waiting for a family haggis recipe to be shipped over from Scotland and, as I've documented on the Facebook and the Twitter, the requests for British sausages and back bacon were met and graciously appreciated. I am excited to find another cut and another blogger/customer/friend to challenge and hope that these posts will encourage our customers to try something a little different. And when mark is ready to ignite barbecue season at Casa Smrecek I will have a chop ready for him.

the "Belly Chop"

The One You've Never Heard Of

2011-02-28T14:34:00.000-08:00

As it turns out, I most look forward to the things that give me the most frustration. Probably a sign that the whole butcher shop thing was a good idea. Part of the fun of being a butcher is the challenge of consistency. The pigs, beef and lamb are all about the same size each week, but it is always a goal to be faster, more efficient. The more I cut the cleaner I want the bones to be. I have a thorough grasp of the parts of a pig, but beef presents a greater challenge. Partly due to less experience, but also because beef is, well, bigger. Their muscles are dense. The meat is heavy. The bones are sharp. Removing the brisket from the chuck takes time and concentration. I end up tired and short of breath with a mist of perspiration across my brow. I need the assistance of gravity and a meat hook. The work is really physical and, more than any other sub-primal, causes me the most frustration. I recently had a bit of a breakthrough, and am convinced that, like most tricky cuts, once I get it, I’ve got it. Now I just have to wait until my next beef delivery to prove my theory.

But when the beef is all cut I am left with pigs. I would never dismiss the pig as boring, mundane, banal. To the contrary, I am still fascinated by the versatility the pig offers.

I was recently talking to a customer, a fellow who fancies himself a private chef, who was interested in a, “Bone-in pork belly.” I dismissed this as silly, but, being in the business of selling meat for a living, cut him what he wanted and sent him on his way. I returned to the block to clean up what was left of the belly and thought about the idea of serving it bone-in. I cut two bones worth off the side and removed the tips. I frenched an inch or so off the top, scored the skin and folded the bottom half back to where the bones ended and tied it in place. The “belly chop” was born.

Silly. A ridiculous harkening back to 1996 and, perhaps, a result of my time working in a David Burke kitchen, but nonetheless fun. Cute. A cut that could be easily reproduced and marketed as “a Butcher & Larder original!” To lend my new creation a bit of legitimacy, I invited long time customer, avid home cook, chartuerist and blogger Mark Smrecek to take the “chop” home and have a little fun. The results will be posted here and on his blog, http://homemadebacon.wordpress.com.

The point of all this isn’t that I hade a moment to have a little silly fun, or to further prove the versatility of the pig. While I would be happy letting this be about offering up a fun challenge to a valued, trusted customer (and more of these challenges with different friends will follow…) that isn’t the point either. This was a lesson in marketing. In creative butchering. There was a time when pork bellies were just used for bacon. A noble cause, no doubt, but we should be reminded that, until Celebrity Top Chef Tom Colicchio put “braised fresh bacon” on his tavern menu at Gramercy Tavern. No one was cooking it at fancy restaurants. No one was making their own bacon. Of course, most of Argyle St. was aware of how good the belly was and it was applied all over China Town, but the fancy set didn’t take notice until “Fresh Bacon” was born. Soon it was everywhere, and continues to be everywhere. So much so that bellies are one of the cuts my pig farmer rarely has extras to spare. Fortunately I don’t buy parts and each pig comes with a belly.

In the opening frenzy, I was ‘speed butchering’ my way through pigs just to keep the case stocked full of chops, loins, and all the other usual cuts, and some of the unusual cuts my customers were requesting. Now that we are settling in I am easing up on the accelerator and looking to find parts I can offer as a fun and interesting alternative to the usual suspects.

Will the ‘Belly Chop’ be a staple? A Butcher & Larder featured item? Probably not. But as we continue to examine and dissect our pigs, as we learn new techniques and cuts from other cultures and as we just get better at what we do we will find new things to offer. New ways to approach the muscles we work with. More options to talk to our customers about. With time we will better understand all the animals we cut and our case will be filled with the familiar, the unfamiliar and the never heard of. The other day Chris responded to a customer’s quizzical reaction to his suggestion saying, “Sometimes the more expensive cut isn’t necessarily the best cut.” Indeed, sometimes the best cut is the one you never knew existed.

Day One

2011-01-16T19:03:00.000-08:00

I slept surprisingly well last night. Sure, I was anxious and nervous. My mind racing most of the day trying to think about pricing, display, what I forgot to do, what I forgot to buy. I couldn’t help but wonder who, if anyone might show up. Would it be a long line of people just wanting to see the place? Will people think we are too expensive?

But as my head hit the pillow, my brain still swollen with worry, anxiety, doubt, excitement, I drifted off quickly and slept quite well.

I woke up, had a nice hot shower and headed down to open up my butcher shop for the first time. Just like that. Allie and I discussed a plan for the day and at noon-time, after face book and twitter had sent our message to the world wide web, our first customer crossed our threshold.

I am quite proud of our little deli case. It is replete with sausage, roast beef, chicken liver pâté and odd cuts like pork collar (we sold a lot of pork collar today!), jowls, sirloin tip marrow bones and the lonely spider steak (sold!). From the walk-in cooler I cut a beautiful bone-in ribeye, a three-pound pork chop, a hunk of beef navel and even fired up the band saw for some short ribs. Allie, in the midst of ringing people up, jumped right in pulling sausage links from the case and plopping them up on the scale while Amanda held her own with the manual meat slicer, a beauty that got worked over today as we sold out of bacon and shaved rosy-pink slices of roast beef destined for a couple slices of bread and a lunch box.

I felt like a butcher. I still feel like a butcher, because I am a butcher. It is an odd thing to think about as none of my relatives were butchers and, save for a few days behind the counter at The Meat Hook in Brooklyn, today was my first day working in a butcher shop.

But if feels right and I am happy, a different feeling entirely than I felt as a chef.

I have been talking for some time about my desire to be the friendly neighborhood butcher. I went on about getting people to understand our mission to cut and sell the whole animal, not just the obvious parts. But there is so much more than that going on behind our counter. I told a customer today that while we take our work very seriously, it is a great feeling to be able to have fun again! We aren’t constricted by a menu concept or concerned with having enough variety to please everyone from discerning foodie-types (both positive and negative connotations) to the vegans that “sometimes cheat a bit with bacon.” We plan on making sloppy joes for Wednesday’s hot sandwich and porchetta sandwiches with fennel pickles and arugula for the cold option. They are kind of diametrically opposed, but both things we love to eat. The staff and I look at both options with the same reverence (read: giggly drool), so why not serve them both?

This is what I look forward to the most.

It was a bumpy road, paved with natural progression that got me here and I am anxious to get settled. I am anxious to meet my neighbors and greet old friends. I have gone on about selling my public some things they may not recognize, but if it is a pork chop you want, I’m proud to say mine are the best and I’ll eagerly talk to you about cooking it or anything else in the case. If today was any indication the public likes to see a guy and his crew working hard and having fun. And why not? What could be more inspiring than a bunch of goofballs laughing, picking on each other like siblings, singing (poorly and often with air guitar) who happen to know a lot about meat, and how to cook it?

The Butcher's New Clothes

2011-01-06T19:08:00.000-08:00

I ruined a lot of clothing. I sat atop a twenty-foot ladder installing light fixtures (though Chris installed most of them). I calked, sanded and painted (though Amanda and Richard did most of the painting). I refinished a butcher-block table and installed a sink. As a staff we did a lot of joint compounding, spackling, sanding painting, lifting, moving, sawing, patching, electrical and plumbing work, sweeping and mopping. We built shelves, scrubbed equipment, rummaged for and installed a killer stereo, fiddled with hot water heaters, built boxes to hide ugly compressors, organized, re-organized, re-painted, re-scrubbed, re-mopped and re-arranged. This past week we worked tirelessly trying to get the shop ready for inspection by the City Health Department. Before our initial inspection I went home and took a two hour nap after a 14-hour day and Chris never made it home, electing instead to sleep for a couple of hours in the office. On the floor. Amanda brought home loads of greasy, paint-caked towels and laundered them so we would have a constant supply of cleaning rags, and Richard brought in a battery of power tools-on the bus-from his house that would have made Norm Abrams proud.

The point of all this is that we worked really really hard to get our little shop ready not just for the inspection, but for you. The flood of support from the Twittersphere and Facebook, the barrage of emails and phone calls, the number of people stopping in to inquire about the shop and wish us luck (and god-speed!) was and continues to be overwhelming! Chicago is really happy to have a butcher shop and, quite emotionally, I am happy to be your butcher! But I am also really scared.

The fact is I have no idea what to expect. Are people going to go along with my idea that, if I don’t have the ribeye you came in for I can sell you something else…maybe a little more interesting? Are folks going to expect to walk in and get 6 pork bellies and 2 hams? This ‘whole animal’ thing is intimidating. Animals only have so much stuff on them, and when it’s gone it’s gone until the next round of animals show up. Butchering is a lot of hard physical work along with making bacon, sausage, roast beef, pastrami, sandwiches, pâtés, ham, soup…

Mind you, I am not complaining. This is what I really want to be doing, but I have this lingering fear that people will show up with expectations that I can’t meet. I’m terrified that I will order what I think is enough product from the farmers only to run out of meat mid week! Or worse- have product sitting around because no one wants it! What if, after all the hype, people show up and think, “This is it?”

I have to remind myself that what we are doing is our idea of what a butcher shop should be, and we proudly stand behind it. Delicious, responsibly raised meat and house-made meat products reasonably priced, and a crew of good people you’ll want to get to know, and trust. I have always believed that if you have a strong idea you are willing to go all out and risk everything for it is the right idea. And if it fails, at least you have your pride. I will never be the guy that says he orders whole animals from farms and is seen with a cart full of meat at the Aldi’s. And I am not out to be the guy that introduces the ‘flap steak’ to the general public, or the militant, cleaver-wielding shop-keeper that huffs and chastises when someone wants a tenderloin. I want to sell you a chicken. A really delicious chicken that you-and I-are proud of. And if, somewhere along the way you want to talk about flap steaks or chuck tenders, lamb bellies or pork collars, palerons or beef navels, I’ll be right there to walk you through them.

My crew and I built this store and we will be the ones behind the counter serving you. I will be behind the block in some new clothing, apron and scabbard doing the cutting, and Chris, Richard and Amanda will be there making it all into delicious treats for you to enjoy and share with your friends and family. Allie’s sweets will be evidence of her presence, and if you are lucky you might catch a glimpse of her pulling a pie out of the oven.

If I sound a bit over-impassioned it is because I most certainly am. This means more to me than any restaurant job I’ve ever had and it is because I feel like I am doing some good, contributing something to and connecting with my city.

Waiting

2011-01-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in my shop. Alone. From my office I can see the new red signs in the front windows. I can see the new light fixtures that Chris (former mado sous and current B&L right hand man) and I installed, and I can smell the freshly painted walls and floor. The butcher-block table I refinished is standing anxious next to the old deli case that Amanda, our other employee fastidiously scrubbed, polished and painted. A tiny brass pig head sits on the counter waiting to be mounted, and the digital deli scale, the most modern looking thing in the place, waits to be plugged in. Ornette Coleman blares through a pair of gifted speakers over the hum of the walk-in cooler as I wait.

I am waiting for staff to show up to clean and organize. I am waiting for Allie to return from errands so we can talk about payroll or business insurance or quick books. I am waiting on a plumber to tidy up a leaky faucet. Mostly, though I am waiting to get back to work.

Looking at what we have built, and I don’t just mean the tangible, I am more excited than ever to open this shop. As a chef, I was always happiest cutting animals, making sausages and working on pâtés, terrines, hams and other types of charcuterie. The opportunity to make pastrami kept me up all night in anxious anticipation of the process. An all beef mortadella was the dangling carrot that got me out of bed at 6am and gave me time to get it done right and still be ready for service at 5. But service at 5 was never as fun. The rush a busy service gave me as a younger cook, sous chef and young chef had been replaced.

One of the most common things people ask me now is, “why a butcher?” What led me here? Is it a phase that I will tire of? Am I riding a trend? I can tell you all about the first time I cut a pig. The first large hog I broke into primals, the first whole-roasted suckling I disassembled for a dinner special. I can’t, however, explain when the quiet mornings spent carefully carving off a shoulder, sculpting a ham and separating loin from belly became my driving force. I only know it makes me happy.

It is no secret that the situation at the restaurant wasn’t ideal. Those who knew us and worked with us read the frustration in our expressions. I was showing an employee a book about young butchers and we were reading about a guy about my age with a shop doing the kinds of things we like and she said, “You should do this. I mean…why not?”

And that was it. We went back to work prepping and cooking and it never came up again.

Months later I am sitting in an empty shop waiting. Waiting to place orders with farmers. Waiting to fire up the grinder and make our first batch of sausages. To stock the case with flat irons, skirt steaks, bacon, pastrami and roast beef. To slice and serve a porchetta sandwich or a bowl of chili. To hand out paychecks. To talk to customers about what to take home and feed to their families. I am waiting to start offering butchering demos and family dinners. To turn on the lights, plug in the scale and get out of my office.

Bits

2010-12-23T08:42:00.000-08:00

Ellen's expression was vacant. Her hand rose to cover her mouth and she just sort of slumped. It was the simple matter of the liver. Her despondency wasn't because she had to actually eat the liver. She was over her squeamishness and was committed to eating every last bit. It was that just when she thought she'd allotted the last bit, something else came up. "What are we doing with the skin?" "What do you want to make with the heart?" "Hey Ellen- you have two loins here. What are we doing with them?" The blessing and the curse of the pig is that it is so versatile. That is why chefs like it so much. It gives us so many options. If, however, you are dealing with 200 pounds of fat, meat, skin and bone in your house, by yourself, it can be a bit overwhelming.

Fortunately I have handled my share of pig livers and had a few suggestions. We settled on a simple ragú I used to make at my restaurant, a ragú bianco. I told Ellen to grind the liver along with an equal amount of pork trimmings and cook it in some pork fat, add some diced fennel and onion, stock and finish with a splash of cream. Delicious with some penne, and something else she can put up in jars.

The end result turned out a little different as Ms. Malloy didn't follow the recipe exactly. Turns out the ragú pot turned into a safe haven for homeless odds and ends. A touch of braising liquid from the pork ribs, some tomatoes from a CSA (funny, because the name ragú bianco comes from the fact that it has no tomato!), and I think I heard something about a little bit of chili she'd made that wouldn't fit into the last canning jar being dumped in. While the kitchen aid grinder is an ok tool, it didn't do too well with the liver so she diced it.

Upon telling me all this, Ellen seemed a little scared. Like it was bad to stray from the recipe. Quite to the contrary, I told her that as long as she thought it was delicious, the recipe doesn't matter. The point is to use up all of the pig, and the ragú she wound up was delicious and still tasted a bit like liver. That, I told her, is how an old Italian grandma would cook. That statement seemed to put her at ease, and with that we started making our sausage.

This is the basic ragú bianco recipe. Feel free to adjust as you see fit.

Ragu Bianco

1 Pork Liver, soaked over night in ice water

Equal amount (about 3#) pork trimmings

4T rendered pork fat (butter will do if you’ve used all your rendered fat making pie)

2 bulbs fennel, chopped smallish

1 onion, chopped to match the fennel

a few sage leaves

3C pork or chicken stock

½ C Heavy Cream

Mix the liver and pork and grind through a 3/8-inch die. In a heavy pan, melt the fat with the sage leaves. Add the ground meat and cook over moderate heat until cooked but not browned. Push the meat to the sides of the pan creating an empty space in the center. Add the onion and fennel and cook until completely softened but no color. Stir in stock and simmer for about an hour. Remove from the heat and add the cream. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt. Serve with a short, dried pasta like penne or a fresh pasta that takes well to a thick sauce like cavatelli. When the pasta and sauce are mixed and ready to serve stir in a knob of butter. Serve with Parmesan Cheese on the side.

Why head cheese isn't so bad after all

2010-12-20T10:02:00.000-08:00

Ellen Malloy didn't see a pork chop. She didn't see the ham she was so excited to have hanging in her garage. She had asked like a little girl on santa's lap if we could make pepperoni for her future back yard pizza parties, but she didn't see that either. Nor the rib ragú, rillettes she pleaded for or the tenderloin. The aroma of pork bones roasting for stock or leaf lard rendering for pastry crust had yet to fill her nostrils and the idea that we could cure a lomo or make back bacon like she ate when she lived in london hadn't entered her mind.

Ellen Malloy saw a pig on her counter and all the color left her face.

Suddenly this was a reality. All the planning and blogging and tweeting and facebooking about the "Butcheress" and honoring the whole animal was on her kitchen counter. She was face to snout with a year's worth of pig - head to tail.

I put on my silly, blue apron and my butcher's scabbard (I wore this more for effect than necessity. I wanted Ellen to feel like there was a proper butcher at her house to guide her, not just Rob) and began to unwrap Bessie from her plastic cloak. This was probably the only time all day there was silence. I needed to rip off the proverbial bandaid, so I called Ellen to her pig and started in with how we would proceed. With her dog's tails thwapping against my legs in hopeful anticipation of snacks I removed the leaf lard, the skirt and flank and the tenderloin, and Ellen started to come out of shock. Explanations of cuts were peppered with questions and observations. Bursts of excitement connected animal to food and conjured up images of a pantry full of sealed glass jars and a garage full of hanging ham and sausage. I distracted her with questions like, "Do you want nice, meaty spareribs for the smoker or should we leave more meat on the belly?" Often she asked me (or Paul Fehribach- Chef at Big Jones {eat there!!!!} or Allie, who brought fourth the idea for the legendary rib ragú) what we would do and was most often answered with, "Ellen...it's your pig."

A slice of sirloin was cooked off and Ellen was frying up corn cakes and opening jars of her home made chow chow and snacks were passed around. Suddenly she was Ellen again and a curly-haired flurry was spinning about the house getting containers and and taking pictures for her legendary twitter feed, offering up beer and coffee and munching on the delicious spritz cookies Allie brought, and all the while learning the wheres, hows and whys of the pig...her pig. "This is sooooooooooooo cool!" She must have said that thirty times or more, and her enthusiasm got her mind racing. Until it was her turn.

I schlepped in the other half of Bessie and set her on the counter, unwrapped her and handed Ellen a knife.

"Oh my god! Oh...uh...oh my god! I'm doing this. I...uh...OH MY GOD!" Ellen held the knife the way I showed her. A butcher holds a knife the same way a serial killer might, though for different reasons. Comfort, ease of motion, better control. Ellen grasped the knife and her knuckles were white. Her shoulders were tensed up into her ears. Her eyes were bugging out of their sockets and she was starting to loose color again. But she dove in like a champ and eventually calmed down. With some guidance and a little assistance she turned a half pig into food, and she did a really god job. As she relaxed and worked her way through, her personality came back and, as before, the cuts were being allocated and a plan was being formed. We were cutting the shanks off the shoulders and discussing their uses and I mentioned brining and confiting them. Perfect dinner for two. Just remove from the confit fat and blast in the oven until the skin is crispy and delicious. Somehow this evolved into Ellen cooking dinner for a date and somehow the date became Curtis Duffy. The pork foreshank was thereby dubbed the Curtis Duffy cut.

And this is how the day proceeded. She looked around her kitchen and saw pork chops. She saw hams and salami that would hang in her garage. She saw jars of rillettes on her pantry shelves and could smell the ribs braising for the ragú Allie insisted she make (a world famous recipe of hers...) and the leaf lard rendering for pastry crust and the bones roasting for stock. She was excited about making lomo, and was giddy about making back bacon like she ate in London. It was fun, but focused. Food ideas were passed around, photos and notes were taken and at the end of the day when we were sitting around the table recapping and planning and drinking well earned beers, Ellen was projecting pure joy. The kind of joy earned from a hard day's work. From turning fear into fun and purpose. From a sense of accomplishment and community. There was more to come. She still had Bessie's head to deal with, and her heart and liver and kidneys, too, but suddenly the fear she'd had over those parts were eschewed away by the need to honor her Bessie. She had taken a pigs life for food and was ready to eat it all up.

2010-12-15T15:46:00.000-08:00

It is really all about relationships. I love being a butcher and all that goes along with it. Sausages, corned beef, all the stuff I’ve talked about making in all the articles and interviews. But there is something else about being a butcher that appeals to me in a way being a chef never did. It’s the interaction. The talking about food. Hearing what other people are cooking really interests me now, where before I just wanted to be assured what I was cooking was appealing. I know, for instance, very little about Asian cuisines, so when a customer asks for short ribs cut Korean Barbeque style, I not only provide a service and a quality product, but I can make that person happy while they teach me something about cooking. I really want The Butcher & Larder to be a neighborhood shop where people from all backgrounds and upbringings come. I’ve noticed over the years a lot of the same people shopping at the Green City Market, going to the same farm stands, talking to and sharing with the same farmers. The relationship becomes more important than the product itself after a while. That is what I want at my shop. I want to earn people’s respect and trust. I want to hear about what they made with the leg of lamb they came in to buy and I want to convince them to try making their tomato sauce with pork neck bones and then hearing about the results. I want to talk a college kid through roasting a chicken for his parent’s first visit to his first apartment in the big city and even truss it up for him. Years from now he’ll explain to a friend why we truss a chicken and maybe mention he learned it from a butcher when he was in college.

On Saturday I will be butchering a pig with the wonderful Ellen Malloy. There will be a host of people in attendance and a lot of food will be prepared. It wont, however, be my food. It will be a group effort. Ellen shared a book with me today that was serving her as a guide. Not the actual recipes as much as the aesthetic. The conversation led to preserving with an emphasis on canning, something I know little about. This, in my mind made this project as beneficial to me as it will (hopefully) be to her. She graciously invited my wife to learn about canning and the whole thing is turning into a project, almost a statement, about the importance of community. What will we make? Who knows! It will be delicious and fun and educational, and will fortify relationships between people who love food and everything the table is supposed to be about.

Yes you can...

2010-12-06T10:13:00.000-08:00

Ellen Malloy was not the first person to ask me about one on one home butchering. I love that people are interested in the craft and love even more that people are interested in eating better food and supporting the little guy. In fact, this was largely the impetus for our new venture, The Butcher & Larder. Yes, butchering and charcuterie is trendy now, but what started as something we did at the restaurant because we believed it was the most sustainable, respectful way to work with farmers and happened to enjoy, has evolved. This was the right time and the logical next step for us.

So, why was Ms. Malloy's request different to me than all the (many, many) others? Sure, she promised to blog about the experience, and as she is a highly regarded national food personality and I am the little guy who owns a new business, the attention seemed beneficial. I even suggested that we have dueling blogs so readers can get both perspectives. That wasn't it though. It wasn't for press or friendship or any other reason than her honest admittance of fear and squeamishness.

Ellen, like many, has food issues. For someone who has been working in the business for a long time, both in the kitchen and behind the computer representing some of the city's (and country's) top chefs, she has had to squeam her way through countless offerings of tripe, heart, kidney, etc.

To me, the butcher, these cuts are not just the freaky, St. John's wannabe cuts that people are serving to try to fit in to the trend of the day. These are the butcher's cuts, and extend the the animal's ability to sustain. The idea of eating kidney didn't come about because St. Fergus told us to. Someone a long time ago was really hungry, had a family to feed and only had one pig. The fact that they raised the pig meant they could trust the quality of what they were eating. They had, though, to figure out how to make it delicious. But butcher's cuts aren't limited to offal. There are oyster steaks and sirloin flaps and tongues, and mock tenders and that funny little steak that looks like a skirt that comes from the drop loin. And there is blood. And there is fat. And scraps. And heads. And so many little odds and ends that come off of an animal that most would normally discard but the peasants had to use. To survive.

Ellen will not starve without our pig. In fact, she has committed to a side of beef and a lamb, too. This is not about getting through the winter because she has no other option.

It is about respect. Respect for the animals. Respect for the farmers. Respect for the little guys like me that will try and convince you to trust me when, while I may be out of the skirt steak you need for your fajita party, the sirloin flap will do just as well...and cost you a little less. And respect for herself. She has a wonderful vegetable garden and winter hoop house that she tends to year round, and a backyard full of chickens she has been caring for and respectfully enjoying. She realized the other day that while she likes the idea of making bacon from pork belly and Serrano ham from a fresh pig leg these 'parts' come from a pig. The 3# ribeye I cooked for her came from a cow, and lamb chops come from a lamb. It is not about novelty or exploring the ins and outs of the latest trend her clients are pushing. She isn't doing this because it will be a fun blog idea. If any of these were the reason I wouldn't have agreed to guide her through the process. I don't need to take the time away from opening a business to show Ellen Malloy how to hold her knife or feel out a seam of connective tissue with her fingers before cutting (yes, Ellen. You will be cutting along with me.) I don't need to volunteer my time to teach her how to make rillettes or sausage.

The Butcher & Larder was, as I said, our next logical step. It was an evolution. This is where we feel we need to be now. What we should be doing. This too, for Ellen, is the next logical step in her evolution as an eater and I am happy to be a part of it.

Pig Day Agenda:

- Arrive at Casa de Malloy with pig

- Unwrap and remove kidneys, leaf fat, inner skirt and thin flank

- Break into primals:

Shoulder, Loin, Belly, Ham

- Fabrication options:

Shoulder-

Shank (braise, rillette, ragú)

Country Ribs

Collar (cure, pot-roast, brine and smoke)

The rest can be rolled and tied for braise/roast, seamed out for sausage/salami,

Cut for stew meat, confit

Lardo

Ground pork

Loin-

Bone out whole for roasting

Baby back ribs

Split into rack (pork rib chops or bone-in roast) and

Loin end (t-bone/porter house, or separate into tenderloin and boneless loin)

Canadian bacon

Lomo/Lonza

Belly-

Spare ribs

Bacon

Pancetta

Braise/Roast

Ham-

Dry cure (prosciutto/serrano ham)

Smoked country ham

Brined ham roast (x-mas style ham with or without cracklin')

Ham hoc

Lean pork for grilling/roasting/grinding

All scraps will go to rillettes, sausage, potted pork, confit, ragú, terrine, and rendered cooking/baking fat

2010-04-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

Ah, speck. For some reason, I resisted making speck for a long time. I can't explain it, just didn't want to do it. But here I am, on day 2 of the smoking process, wondering how I'm going to wait the 5 months it takes for this stuff to hang! Pretty simple process...I boned out the ham and trimmed it up. I cured it for about 10 days with salt (I mixed a free sample of smoked sea salt I got from the wonderful Terra Spice company in with the salt), brown sugar, juniper, garlic, savory, mustard seed and black pepper. It will cold smoke all day for 3 more days (5 total) and hang in the cellar for 5 arduous months. I guess I'll just have to be patient.

photos from our choucroute garnie!

2010-04-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

We just finished up our big choucroute garnie dinner. Homemade kraut and LOTS of pork. The rundown was: speck-cured bacon (cured with juniper, savory, garlic and brown sugar), smoked and cooked all day very slowly between layers of kraut and onions), cider-brined smoked pork chops, frankfurters, smoked semi-cured sausages (seasoned with caraway and mustard seed) cabbage rolls stuffed with pork liver dumplings and pickled pork shoulder (the surprise hit of the evening!!!!).

here are some photos of of the various piggy bits being prepped...

franks being stuffed and cooked

chris taking a breath after a long week manning the smoker...and the awesome cider-brined racks

mmmm...special choucroute bacon...

delicious layers of kraut and bacon...

The evening kicked off with some boar salami, potted riesling-cured foie gras, and classic tart flambé. Meunster style cheese followed choucroute, and we finished with a beautiful kugelhopf served with house-made creme fraiche and sour cherry preserves. The dinner was a lot of work, but well worth it. All in attendance had a great time, and the food came out as good as we could have hoped!

more stuff...'cause I feel bad...

2010-03-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

here are a few more photos of stuff we've been doing around the office...

Slagel Farm mutton. It was 130 lbs. and about four years old. The best part was the package of goodies hidden in the chest cavity...the usual, but much appreciated heart, liver and kidneys, plus the added bonus of spleen and an enormous pile of caul fat.

We needed to make some smoked sausage for a big dinner coming up. These are pork sausages stuffed into beef rounds, and seasoned with mustard seeds, coriander, juniper, caraway and fennel. My sous chef, Chris is seen here adding pecan shells and planks from an oak barrel given to us by our friends at Goose Island Brewery used to age their Bourbon County Stout. The combination makes an intoxicatingly wonderful smoke that permeates the meats and adds wonderful flavor.

Here is a shot (not bad for a camera phone...) of last night's mixed grill. On the bottom left is a paillard of pork cut from the leg, and on top is a half of a pork tongue that has been brined, poached, peeled and finished on the wood grill. It was served with locally grown bordeaux spinach from Genesis Growers dressed with black olives and sherry vinaigrette. I love that at our restaurant things like grilled tongue and beef heart out sell chicken!

it's been a while...

2010-03-20T18:08:00.000-07:00

I suppose an apology is in order. I was so excited when I started this blog, as after each post, the followers grew. Though the photos were passable at best, I was enjoying writing about my love of meat and butchery. I used the holidays as an excuse, but once new year's passed, I got lazy. Ok, to my credit, I have been quite busy...BUTCHERING. And cooking and curing and teaching butchering and talking on panel discussions about using whole animals in restaurants...but today I decided I missed writing about butchering. I am sorry for the lapse in updates. I love seeing new posts on the blogs I follow, and I will try to update more often...with better photos.

If it were at all possible, cutting and curing meat is all I would do. I am never as happy as when I am alone in the kitchen cutting meat. I find an unusual pleasure in knowing how sharp my knives are, and seeing how clean the bones of the animal are when I've finished cutting. Even the tedious work of seaming and cleaning is fine by me. As many of you know, we cut a lot of pig at the restaurant. Such a wonderful animal, it has so much to offer, and is so versatile. We never get tired of finding things to do with pig parts. However, when December rolled around, we decided to give beef its propers, and got ahold of our friend Marty Travis from Spence Farm in Fairbury, IL. He heads up a co-op of small family farmers called Stewards of the Land, and I thought one of his people might be able to talk beef with me. We were put in touch with Terry and Judy Bachtold at their farm, Grazin' Acres where they raise a small amount of 100% grass-fed Black Angus beef cattle. We agreed to take a hind quarter and they even let us have the little guy's head, too! I thought taking apart a beef hind quarter would be easy. Like the back half of a pig, just a bit larger. Not quite the case, I learned, but I managed to get the beast apart without too many gaffs. I didn't think to start taking photos until a bit of the way into the butchering, but following are some decent shots of the process. Removing the round (leg) was particularly challenging as it was BIG and heavy. It's easy to coax a fresh ham off the carcass with a bit of finesse, but the beef round will best you and make you fully aware of your skills if you're not careful. To put it in perspective, the ball joint was somewhere in between golf ball and baseball sized, and with a good amount of muscle and sweat we were able to cut 4 nice sized marrow bones from the attached femur, and 3 more from the shank. Also pictured is the strip, some carcass shots, and, of course, his smiling face!

porchetta!

2009-11-29T17:32:00.000-08:00

As promised, a bit about porchetta. First, though, I must apologize for the photos that follow. They were taken with a cell phone...

Traditional porchetta is made by roasting a whole pig studded and rubbed with rosemary and garlic and roasted on a spit over a fire made with dried fennel branches. Ours is a bit different. We start by removing the loin and belly from the saddle in one whole piece and removing the skin (mmm...cracklings...). We simmer copious amounts of fennel stalks, rosemary leaves and whole heads of garlic in rendered pork fat until all is tender and purée in a blender. After the mix is cool, we re-blend it to whip it up into a thick, pale green paste. The inside of the loin/belly gets a liberal amount of salt and black pepper, and is smeared with the aromatic fat paste, sprinkled with more fresh rosemary, rolled into a log and tied. The outside is also seasoned, and the roast is tied to a rotisserie basket and spit-roasted until golden and insanely aromatic. I take it off the spit when it is around 100 degrees F. It needs a long time to rest. We cut our porchetta on the thick side and serve it with some cannelini beans, braised greens, or sometimes a drizzle of salsa verde and a bit of dressed arugula. Leftovers and scraps make really great sandwiches.

more pig

2009-11-24T21:30:00.001-08:00

Last we saw this beast, she was hanging gently in our walk-in cooler. As she lies here on my cutting board, facing my little masahiro utility knife that will soon disassemble her into primals, she is thinking, "If I have to go, at least these folks are going to treat me right. I'll be preserved as salami and other cured specialities, proudly roasted on a rotisserie as one of their featured items, and most importantly, so little of me will go in the trash bin. So much of me will be consumed by happy patrons that I actually feel good about having given my life for this retaurant. They respect me. Revere me. They feel the need to honor my life and allow me to live on in the memories of countless happy diners. Feels good to be a pig."

This is, indeed, our approach to cooking. A farmer can not raise a pork chop, so we will not buy a pork chop. Rest assured, everything you see in this picture will be turned into something save for a few glands and maybe a bit of sinew. On a lighter note...Coming soon: the making of PORCHETTA! Also we are quickly approaching a massive salami production day! Fun.

pig butcher day!!!

2009-11-22T16:39:00.001-08:00

All this talk about salami and charcuterie, and no mention of butchering...until now. This is half of a 190-pound hog we got from our good friends at Slagel Family Farm in Fairbury, IL. The other half is on my cutting board awaiting its destiny. Note the ghetto hanging job...desperate times call for desperate measures, and our walk-in cooler is really small. Her head is resting gently on a sheet tray, and will remain there until we need another testa. Also of note...the jar next to the pig is the last of our hose-made giardinera. Delicious with piggy delights!

Mr. Slagel raises a Yorkshire/Duroc blend that have a clean flavor and a really nice meat to fat ratio. Most likely she will turn into our version of porchetta (I'll dedicate another post to that...), smoked country ham, various patés, sausages, salami and testa. We"ll make cracklings with the skin, and brine and smoke the ham hocs. The ribs usually get braised with tomatoes, white wine and chilies, and are turned into a pasta sauce. I could go on and on about all the things we do with our pigs. The joy of butchering combined with always looking for new, fun things to do with all the parts is a large part of why we buy the whole beast.

a new salame and some beef heart

2009-11-19T12:55:00.000-08:00

My first attempt at a salame toscano. It is a coarsley ground pork salame seasoned with red wine, garlic and coarsely ground black pepper. It will hang for about 2 months next to it's big brother the finocchiona.
We have been serving beef heart off the wood grill for quite some time. It is quite popular, and really delicious. Very beefy with a touch of funky organ flavor, and very lean. Served medium rare, it is one of our favorite things to cook.

testa: day two

2009-11-18T15:21:00.000-08:00

A few photos of the testa making process. Note the bits of ear and tongue in the bowl.
The rolled and tied testa is hanging safely in the walk-in cooler.

testa

2009-11-17T20:41:00.000-08:00

Today I put up a couple of pig heads to simmer so that tomorrow I can make testa. Otherwise known as head cheese (although our version is drastically different from the chunk-studded knox blox of pork jello seen in france), we let the heads simmer all night in pork stock with onions and garlic. We then pull all of the edible bits off of the skull (anything that isn't gristle or hair), peel the tongue, and reduce some of the cooling liquid with a lot of rosemary, chili flakes, and other spices. The reduced stock creates a highly seasoned, extremely gelatinous liquid that will bind all the meat together and flavor the finished product. Once the seasoned, reduced stock is incorporated into the pulled head meat, it is seasoned with salt and rolled in plastic wrap into large logs. It is hung in the cooler for a night or two for the flavors to set up, and then it is sliced, given a pinch of sea salt and featured on our charcuterie plate. Oddly, testa is one of our best selling and most requested offerings. It was on our opening menu as the one item I didn't think would sell, and became what we sold out of first. I regularly have guests ask longingly if we 'happen to have' any testa in the back and our servers are subjected to scathing looks when the say we are sold out. Testa was the reason we ventured into offal as a feature of the restaurant (more about that in future posts), and when we realized people weren't squeamish about head cheese, it opened us up to lots of fun and interesting charcuterie and antipasti. Lamb neck terrines, cured and poached pig heads, beef suet bruschetta, blood pudding in myriad forms, liver pate's and terrines, pickled tongues, and, a favorite, corned beef tongue on rye with mustard. I could go on. but it will all come up in future posts. The pig's head is an amazing, under-appreciated cut of pig. If you only made stock from the head it would be worth the (insanely cheap) price. The meat from the head has intense pork flavor and a lip-smacking, unctuous quality that the rest of the beast lacks. Photos coming soon...

finocchiona

2009-11-17T12:29:00.001-08:00

There seemed no better way to start my venture into blogging than with a photo of my first finocchiona, and its newly formed burst of white mold. I feel like a proud papa. Posts to come will discuss salumi and charcuterie ventures past and present, and my unabashed love for butchering animals. I plan to post info on the farmers that supply me with the wonderful animals I cut weekly at my restaurant, and the things we make with them. Though I am technologically challenged, I hope to posts as many pictures as I can, as we are quite proud of what we do.